Taller
by yellowcrayon07
Summary: Kagura copes with some unforeseen consequences of Gintoki's absence. Okita helps. Set before the events of Be Forever Yorozuya, slight Okikagu fluff/UST and platonic Ginkagu friendship.


**Note: spoilers for the second movie. If this gets any response, a sequel for The Reward may be in the works...**

It happened gradually, as it always does. One morning, Kagura woke up to her feet flat against the wall of the closet where she always slept, the crown of her head brushing the other side. Later, when she grumbled about the house shrinking, Shinpachi had suggested she sleep in Gin-san's room, now that...

Neither of them would finish his sentence. She could only stare at him in response. His hair was longer now. It draped across his glasses, highlighting his sharpened features.

Soon afterwards came a day when her favorite qipao was uncomfortably tight around her chest. Maybe they were doing another time-skip arc, she had thought for a strange moment. It was hard to breathe. When she went downstairs in a towel to ask Otose to lend her something that would fit (her face as red as her hair), she couldn't help but notice that the wrinkles around the landlord's face had deepened and her hair now glimmered with a few streaks of gray.

It had been over a year since she'd last seen Gintoki. Shinpachi still came to the office now and then, to clean and answer the phone and drag her on boring construction jobs and cat rescue missions, but they rarely spoke to each other. The whole tsukkomi routine doesn't work as well with two people, it turns out.

Kagura had taken to staying out late over the past few months, seeing as she had no one to come home to anymore. Sometimes she went to Yoshiwara to visit Tsukky. Seeing Seita unnerved her, though - whatever was happening to them all, it was particularly obvious in the boy. He'd grown a foot since the New Year. She visited Anego too, but that always carried the risk of another painful encounter with Shinpachi. Sometimes Sadaharu would join her on her evening sojourns. Tonight, though, she was alone.

When she got to the park, she was surprised to see a familiar figure curled up on one of the benches facing away from her. The Sadist First Division Captain appeared to be fast asleep, his eye mask pulled over his face despite the darkness. It had been a while since she'd seen any of the Shinsengumi. Without Gin-chan around, they certainly got into less trouble with the law. She took a minute to study him. His broad back rose and fell with his even breaths. "Hey," she said, poking his side with the end of her umbrella. "Wake up and fight me, uh-huh, you piece of shit."

Sougo yawned and stretched, pushing the mask up. "Oh no, a wild boar must have escaped from the zoo. I guess we'll be eating pork tonight."

Kagura growled under her breath, taking a fighting stance.

"Fine, fine," sighed the Shinsengumi officer, sitting up. "Don't get your panties in a twist."

"Don't talk about my panties, you pedophile," she spat.

Sougo frowned. "Ah, I doubt any pedophiles would be interested in you now," he said, staring rather pointedly at her chest.

She responded with a quick blow to the head that was hard enough to break the bench clean in half.

"You little…" Sougo began, before leaping up from the splintery rubble and lunging at her, katana already drawn.

She dodged effortlessly and jabbed her umbrella into his stomach, knocking the wind out of him. He took hold of it and twisted sharply, wrenching her arm and throwing her sideways. She swung again. He parried. The edge of his blade scraped against Kagura's knuckles, causing her to grit her teeth and curse under her breath.

Her arms were longer, a part of her brain registered. She needed a bigger umbrella.

She quickly silenced that thought and let loose a hail of bullets at her opponent, all of which were easily dodged. Sougo went for a shoulder-level strike, but her umbrella made contact with his upper arm and shoved him to the ground. A few well placed strokes of the sword around her ankles and she too was left scrambling for her feet.

Fighting felt good. Just getting her blood rushing again and doing something familiar for once was a relief. She could calculate all the moves the young swordsman would attempt and block them just in time. It was like dancing to a song that kept changing rhythms but just knowing her feet could keep up.

She hit Sougo's arm in the same spot, causing him to groan in pain, but he stayed upright and pulled back, aiming to hit her in the head with the hilt of his katana. She followed the path of his momentum and leaned back just enough so it would sail over her head and set him off balance to be vulnerable for his next strike -

Only she didn't lean back far enough. The hilt hit her straight in the forehead and the surprise more than anything else left her dizzy. He kicked her already injured hand and her umbrella slid from her grasp, and then there was the cold steel of the katana at her neck, and the cold steel of her smile looming over her.

"You're taller," he observed with a smirk, and the gravity of that statement brought Kagura to her knees. On her way down, the katana dragged against the skin of her throat, leaving a thin upward cut. "What the hell, China?" Sougo said, pulling his sword back. "I didn't hit you that hard. Are you seriously that out of practice?"

"Your shoulders," she said, out of breath. "They're wider now."

"What are you talking about? Are you finally losing it?"

She noticed the stinging on her neck at last and brought a trembling hand to it. The cut was barely deep enough for a few beads of blood to leak out onto the surface.

"Why doesn't anybody else understand?" she mused, examining the smear of blood on her fingertips with a pensive expression.

Her rival knelt facing her, started to grow concerned. "Understand what?" he asked, trying to keep the nonchalant tone in his voice.

She looked up and met Sougo's eyes. Crimson. Like his. "We're growing up," she said. "Time… it's happening to us."

"Well, yes," he said. "That's kind of what it does."

"But not to us!" she cried. "Not here. We're supposed to have New Year's and Obon and birthdays with censored ages over and over without anything changing. We're supposed to have years' worth of stories without aging a day! Our hair isn't supposed to grow unless it's some stupid gag. Our heroine is supposed to stay the same flat-chested brat as always.

"Now that he's gone," she continued, and her voice trembled. "Everything's falling apart. Listen, I can even speak fluent Japanese now."

"Kagura…" he began, her given name feeling strange on his tongue.

Her face crumpled and she let out a hollow laugh. "What is the deal with this atmosphere? Come on, isn't this supposed to be a comedy anime? Call me a China pig again. Step on my head, pull out your stupidly large bazooka, anything…"

He shook his head. "Listen, Kagura - "

She punched him square in the face, knocking him flat on his back. She took the opportunity to pin him down and let loose on his face, fists pounding into his jaw over and over. "Why won't you hit back?" she cried out between jabs. "Fight me! Don't look at me like that!"

Her eyes were blurry with tears. Her fists trembled and slowed. Sougo caught them in strong, warm hands and lowered them to her sides, his bruised and battered face betraying no emotion.

She let her head drop against Sougo's chest, dissolving into sobs. "This isn't supposed to happen," she hiccupped. "We don't do this sort of fluffy nonsense in Gintama."

"Hey," whispered Sougo. She felt his voice rumble in his chest and it made her shiver in an entirely different way. "Pull yourself together." He patted her back hesitantly.

"He's not coming back," she said.

"Don't be an idiot," he said. "If Danna weren't coming back, we wouldn't even exist anymore. Our story isn't over."

Kagura's sobs abated. She hadn't considered that.

"Now get off me," Sougo continued, his usual brusque tone returning. "Just because you can shop in the ladies' section now and you've stopped sounding like an offensive stereotype doesn't make you any less of a disgusting brat."

A smile broke across Kagura's face and she pulled herself off of him, making sure to almost knee him in the groin on her way up (though actually doing so would put her in unacceptable proximity to his crotch).

The two of them stood up and brushed themselves off. Sougo retrieved his sword and sheathed. He turned to face her in silence. They just looked at each other for a moment. The height difference had indeed lessened.

"We have to stay strong," he said, his dark eyes blazing. "For Danna."

"For Gin-chan," Kagura agreed, eyes brimming with tears once again.

"Besides," Sougo said with a familiarly sadistic quirk of his lips as he scanned her toes to head. "It's not all bad."

And with that, he turned and strolled away, leaving Kagura alone to blush and fume and speculate before she turned for home.

When she got there, she set out Gin-chan's futon in the middle of his room like she always did when he was out late drinking. She crawled inside and stretched out as tall as she could, her toes feeling blissfully unhindered.

The futon retained just the slightest echo of Gintoki's scent, like strawberries and sake and cheap soap. For now, she decided, she'd keep it warm for him.


End file.
